“When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That’s relativity.”

That was Albert Einstein’s way of trying to explain his theory of relativity, a theory which also explains gravity. But as good scientists know, any theory should be tested repeatedly.

That’s just what scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Radioastronomy in Germany did in a recent study where they examined two stars orbiting each other 7,000 light years away, according to The Wall Street Journal. One is a white dwarf while the other is a pulsar, which spins 25 times every second.

Einstein’s theory says objects with mass curve space-time, an effect perceived as gravity. But his theory about gravity does not explain many phenomena in nature and is at odds with quantum theory, which examines objects at the atomic and subatomic level.

Vincent Carroll is The Denver Post's editorial page editor. He has been writing commentary on politics and public policy in Colorado since 1982 and was originally with the Rocky Mountain News, where he was also editor of the editorial pages until that newspaper gave up the ghost in 2009.

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